Housing in Europe, from Financialization to Mobilization – June 9 and June 17, 2021

The Urban Transitions Hub of ICS-ULisboa organises two online events to discuss past, present and future trajectories of housing in Europe, moving from a critical analysis of historical trajectories of housing financialization toward a prospective reflection on housing struggles in times of, and beyond, Covid-19.

Event 1, June 9: Presentation of the report “Financialization of Housing in Southern Europe: Policy Analysis and Recommendations” (with Manuel B. Aalbers, Melissa García Lamarca, Sonia Arbaci, Thomas Maloutas).

Event 2, June 17: Webinar “Housing Crisis and Social Mobilization in Times of Covid-19” (with Miguel Martinez, Marco Allegra, Margherita Grazioli, Armin Kuhn).

Details of the two events below.

Coordination: Luisa Rossini and Simone Tulumello (ICS-ULisboa, Urban Transitions Hub).

 

Event 1: June 9, 2021

10.00-11.30 (WEST – Lisbon); 11-12.30 (CEST – Rome); 12-13.30 (EEST – Athens)

Presentation of the report: Financialization of housing in Southern Europe: Policy analysis and recommendations

https://videoconf-colibri.zoom.us/j/87193090248

Speakers:

• Manuel B. Aalbers (KU Leuven);
• Melissa García Lamarca (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona);
• Sonia Arbaci (University College London);
• Thomas Maloutas (Harokopio University of Athens).

Chair: Luisa Rossini (ICS-ULisboa, Urban Transitions Hub).

With the participation of: José Gusmão (The Left in the European Parliament).

The report presents the results of the study ‘Financialization of housing in Southern Europe: policy analysis and ‘recommendations.’ Through a systematic, historical analysis of legislation on Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece, the study systematizes the role of the state in housing financialization in Southern Europe. It argues that the state has long been active in enabling, promoting and shaping housing financialization throughout six ‘modes’: mortgage debt, mortgage securitization, financialization of social rented housing, financialization of market rental housing, financialization housing companies, and financialization of ‘not-for-housing housing’.

The study, coordinated by Simone Tulumello and co-authored with Myrto Dagkouli-Kyriakoglou, (Malmö University) was funded by the European Parliament, office of MEP José Gusmão (The Left in the European Parliament, Bloco de Esquerda).

Link to the report:  https://repositorio.ul.pt/handle/10451/46368.

 

Event 2: June 17, 2021

14.00-17.00 (WEST – Lisbon); 15.00-18.00 (CEST – Rome); 16.00-19.00 (EEST – Athens)

Webinar: Housing Crisis and Social Mobilization in times of Covid-19

https://videoconf-colibri.zoom.us/j/84466321068

Speakers:

• Armin Kuhn (Left Parliamentarian Group in the German Bundestag and Stadt von Unten Berlin);
• Marco Allegra (ICS-ULisboa, Urban Transitions Hub);
• Margherita Grazioli (GSSI and Blocchi Precari Metropolitani);
• Mig​uel Martinez (University of Uppsala).

Chairs: Mara Ferreri (Northumbria University); Simone Tulumello (ICS-ULisboa, Urban Transitions Hub).

​The seminar will focus on issues related to Housing Crisis and Social Mobilization linking the discussion to the current context of COVID19 to analyze what evolution in the power relations between institutions and bottom-up claims this situation has triggered.

The four speakers will discuss the emerging realities in Barcelona, Madrid, Lisbon, Rome and Berlin.

In the last year, in the context of the global crisis due to Covid-19, the need for addressing a renovated urgent housing issue, is getting a new centrality in legitimizing national and extra-national institutions and, of course, for local mobilizations and housing movements. In the main European cities, housing movements have been resisting and opposing the violence of housing commodification in a context of increasing social distress through the implementation of strategies, from more practical to more structural: from calls for national rental strikes, to the “Stop Evictions” actions, to proposals for referendum to expropriate big housing owners, to claims for the introduction of rent control laws, among others. Are we today in a different context in which the social pressure due to the extraordinarily Covid-19 crisis can make it possible to make requests of a more structural type and not just a strategic one? Could the bottom-up claims connected to social justice and housing rights today, become more effective and be capable to produce structural changes achieving goals that weren’t capable to achieve before, even after the global crisis of 2008?